Director Chris Columbus says he has learned that directors should consider the family ties of children who appear in their films. Columbus, who directed Home Alone, the first two Harry Potter films, and Percy Jackson and Olympians The Lightning Thief , told the Coventry Telegraph Wednesday that he had "learned a big lesson way back when we did Home Alone " because he ended up caStingMacaulay Culkin, whom he described as "a kid who truly had a troubled family life." As a result his celebrity didn't "work out for him," Columbus said. When he cast the Potter films, however, he had already come to the realization "that you really have to cast the family as well, and look at their parents, and those Potter kids have turned out pretty well."